My mother is in town

And I think it describes our relationship well when I tell you that I looked in the mirror this morning, saw my pink streaks had pretty much faded to a strawberry blonde and thought “Hmm.  I wonder if I have time to get my nose pieced before I see Mom tomorrow night.”

In other words, I love her but I also love annoying the heck out of her.

And now, for an interesting Mom story.  One that just happened last night.  Mom drove up from Arizona to be here for Kari’s birthday (I would be jealous of this but quite frankly, I don’t like celebrating my birthday in March all that much so I can understand why mom would rather come up to Minnesota in the summer) which was yesterday.  My baby sister is now 40 years old.  Wow.  And yes, she’ll always be my baby sister, even when we’re in our seventies.

Things you should know – Mom has a Papillion dog named Lilly and she rescued a pure bred Siamese without a name.  He would respond to her when she would call Lilly and she was thinking of naming him Billy or Willy (which, actually, is a pretty popular name on my mother’s side of the family and it smacks highly of “No.”  Don’t name pets after family members).  I suggested she name him Philadelphia Chicken and she could call him Philly for short.   But Josh saw a picture of the cat and decided his name was Bo.

Anyway, Kari called me today and says “Well, you know Mom, she’s always full of surprises.”

My first thought is “Oh, God, did she pick up another hitchhiker (done it before, some homeless guy – long story) and bring him to Minnesota with her?”

Fortunately, that is not the case. No, Mom brought Bo and Lilly and arrives at home when Kari and Josh are out for lunch. Bo is zipping all over the house, he is full of energy and is apparently even bigger than Sebastian length-wise.

Josh looks in Kari’s room and says “There’s an animal under your bed.”

Kari says “Oh, no, there’s not, honey, it’s okay (because apparently he’s afraid of monsters (smart child)).” Eric decides to go take a look. Then, out of the corner of her eye, Kari sees a cat. She assumes it is Bo but the cat is smaller than Bo. She doesn’t think much of it until Bo comes walking out of the dining room. Wait. What’s going on here? Did she see Bo’s reflection in the stainless steel garbage can?

No. Apparently Mom decided, since Bo is so pretty, maybe Josh would like to have a kitten. So she went and found a female Siamese cat and introduced her to Bo.  Nature took its course, female cat became pregnant and so it turns out that my mother drove from Arizona to Minnesota with a Papillion (Lilly), a large Siamese cat (Bo), a smaller Siamese cat (name unknown) AND two Siamese kittens that were born on Friday. FRIDAY! They are 6 days old.

This is insane. This is my mother.  And people wonder why I’m so eccentric?